One of the most important decisions anyone will make in their lives is whether, and whom, to marry. A well-chosen partnership can lead to a happy steady state and help to weather downturns. But even the best long term partnerships can have their ups and downs. For currencies that are wedded to the U.S. dollar, the war in Iran has put some stress into their relationships.
The Department of Justice drops probe into Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Kevin Warsh's confirmation moves forward, and Department of Homeland Security funding is back in the spotlight.
Sentiment toward BDCs – funds that invest in small and midsize private U.S. businesses – has improved since early March. BDC bond spreads have stabilized and outperformed the broader investment grade (IG) index, suggesting credit investors are increasingly comfortable with downside risk.
A few weeks ago, I sat down at my laptop and built a trading platform. It connects to three financial exchanges. It ingests news from RSS feeds, web searches, Reddit and Twitter.
On Friday, the Department of Justice announced it was dropping its investigation of the current Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Senator Thom Tillis was effectively blocking the nomination process from moving forward while the Department of Justice investigation of Powell was ongoing.
If venture capital investment is a measure of the economic future, California would seem to have locked things up. In the first quarter of this year — by far the biggest quarter for US VC investment ever — an unheard-of 85% of the money went to California companies, according to the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. For all of 2025, California’s share was an also-unprecedented 60%.
Supply shocks from the Strait of Hormuz don’t hit immediately. But the lag is over. What comes next, across oil, food, plastics, and chips, lands on a Fed in transition.
Global Head of Securitised Products John Kerschner and Portfolio Manager Ian Bettney from Janus Henderson’s Global Securitised Team examine how CLOs and other securitised credit have weathered recent volatility, and why selectivity and active management remain central to capturing opportunities across the market.
It’s a stressful investing landscape right now and investors are feeling it. Volatility, driven by a chaotic geopolitical landscape, has defined much of the market narrative this year — perhaps just second to everything AI. Although markets have marched steadily upward, a growing number of investors are making more defensive moves to adapt. In fact, recent data from VettaFi suggests downside protection ETFs are gaining significant traction.
Active ETFs are punching well above their weight in 2026. Despite representing just 12% of total ETF assets, actively managed funds have captured 40% of year-to-date flows, Todd Mathias, head of North America ETF product strategy at Franklin Templeton, told attendees at an April 27 roundtable discussion at the firm’s Manhattan office.
With the proverbial ceasefire negotiation can kicked down the road for the second time in a week, the U.S. and Iran remain in a stalemate over the Strait of Hormuz.
The defining feature of a Ponzi scheme is that it persuades investors to pay for future cash flows that, at least in part, don’t actually exist, while creating the impression that those cash flows imply an attractive return on the price investors pay. If we look carefully at the record valuation extremes in the equity market, and the wildly elevated profit margins that investors appear to view as permanent, we can already see the potential for difficult, even tragic outcomes for investors.
If you have an aging parent whose bills are starting to be neglected, or a client who needs more hands-on financial oversight than a planner provides, you might consider hiring a daily money manager. The American Association of Daily Money Managers can help you find someone in your area.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of life insurance policies lapse or are surrendered for cash. The policyholders walk away with whatever the carrier offers. Their advisors sign off. Their attorneys see nothing. And nobody asks the obvious question. Could this policy have sold for more?
No one likes that heart-drop feeling of missing an important detail. And yet, this happens all too often when it comes to healthcare planning. Healthcare and health insurance are complex topics. Without an expert or the right resources, it can be very difficult for financial advisors to do on their own.
The Census Bureau released its latest quarterly report for Q1 2026 showing the latest homeownership rate is at 65.3%.
Technology megacaps are pushing benchmark indexes to new records while the rest of the market is lagging behind. Traders can be forgiven for feeling like they’ve seen this movie before.
Fifth district manufacturing activity increased in April according to the most recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The composite manufacturing index rose three points points to 3, marking the highest level for the index in 20 months. This month's reading was above the forecast of 2.
BlackRock Inc. is bringing its roughly $2.5 billion money market fund to cryptocurrency exchange operator OKX, with Standard Chartered Plc holding the underlying assets — the latest sign that Wall Street infrastructure and digital-asset markets are converging.
European stocks started the year much stronger than their US peers but the tantalizing prospect of the euro area clawing back some of its persistent gap in earnings growth, and the higher company valuations that come with it, looks to have slipped through its grasp again.
The chip industry seems to be the only game in town lately. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, known as the SOX, has risen 48% this year. Bourses in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are riding the wave and hitting record highs, brushing away potential energy shocks from the military conflict over Iran.
The Iran conflict has turned energy markets into a moving target, with oil prices adjusting as expectations around Strait of Hormuz supply risk shift.
In elevated financial markets, risk is rarely eliminated. It is usually only relocated. During the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, mortgage risk did not disappear. It was transformed, repackaged, and spread across the system in ways that made it appear safer than it was.
The “American Industrial Renaissance” is an investment theme investors and allocators alike have probably been pitched several times, or at the very least heard about. Supply chains for manufactured goods have evolved to become more complex, while U.S. manufacturing employment as a share of total employment has steadily declined, leaving policy makers to grapple with the ramifications of a shrinking manufacturing base.
For all the chatter about Artificial Intelligence lifting economic growth, GDP isn’t showing it yet. We are projecting that real GDP grew at a 2.0% annual rate in the first quarter, matching the average annualized pace of growth since the peak back in late 2007, right before the Financial Panic and so-called Great Recession. In other words, mediocre growth.
Economic data released last week continued to highlight the same tension investors have been grappling with for months: moderating growth, inflation that remains “stuck” near 3 percent, and interest rates that remain the key swing factor for markets.
Cook has spent 15 years focused on the King — the thousands of decisions about industrial design, manufacturing, and supply chains that make the iPhone an iPhone. Racing in AI would have meant counting pieces while leaving the King unguarded. Ballmer counted pieces, and it cost Microsoft $5.5 billion.
Markets continue to ebb and flow with every headline out of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, but the most important message from the markets is resilience. Earnings season is off to a very strong start, with roughly a 75% beat rate, and the AI investment cycle continues to provide a powerful tailwind for equities.
Many people seem surprised by the US stock market’s resilience during the Iran war. I’m not one of them, and I don’t see the war becoming a significant threat to the market, even if it drags on.
It’s the big story so far in 2026. Alongside AI, geopolitical market volatility is creating dislocations for investors to target. While some are more immediate and some are longer term, the ETF wrapper offers strategies that can attack all kinds of sectors. In corporate bonds, for example, growing volatility could create opportunities.
Despite the turbulence, the global LCC market remains an enormous force. Four of the world’s 10 largest airlines—Ryanair, Southwest, IndiGo and easyJet—operate on a low-cost model. The broader budget travel market is projected to exceed $315 billion by 2028, according to Statista.
When silver demand outstrips mining and recycling output, silver users must tap into aboveground stocks. That generally means rising prices to incentivize those holding silver to give it up.
The midstream energy arena, which includes master limited partnerships (MLPs), has long lured income-hungry investors. A new ETF amplifies that proposition. The MLP & Energy Infrastructure High Income ETF (MLPI) debuted last December. It’s generating buzz, helped by the White House’s rhetoric on bolstering American energy independence, which is viewed as a potential boon for MLPs.
The Middle East war has entered a fragile ceasefire, offering tentative relief to energy and financial markets. Oil prices have eased and volatility has subsided, feeding hopes that the worst disruptions may be passing.
Join the experts at Pictet for a product due diligence session covering how PBOT opens portfolios to direct exposure to AI and automation, from semiconductors and software to advanced manufacturing and autonomous systems.
You don’t have to agree with Chater and Loewenstein’s “crowding-out” hypothesis or their policy prescriptions to benefit from It’s on You, which will, at a minimum, allow the reader to identify and deconstruct i-frame PR when they come across it.
With a better understanding of the derivatives and leverage that led to the GFC, we now explore private credit — a small “niche” financial sector, such as subprime mortgages — which is being called the next match to light a financial bonfire.
It’s tax season, and we’ve been reading a lot about taxes — and strategies for mitigating them. In this note, we’ll take a close look at one such strategy, known as leveraged long/short direct index tax-loss harvesting (LSDI), and explain how investors being pitched the strategy can assess whether it’s right for them.
If the first quarter of 2026 taught us anything, it's that markets are dynamic and that the factors shaping them extend well beyond corporate fundamentals. The road ahead presents a wider range of outcomes than investors have faced in some time. The outlook remains fluid and highly dependent on how several key factors evolve.
The world’s most important central banks will potentially hand investors fresh reasons to sell government bonds this week as policymakers find themselves forced to confront the risk of a war-driven inflation shock.
On Monday, the index returned to record highs, eclipsing the previous peak hit before the war started in Iran. Yet, when compared with the US market, emerging-market shares screen as cheaper than at the start of the war, reinforcing the case for investors to add exposure.
United Airlines Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Officer Scott Kirby confirmed he approached American Airlines Group Inc. and that talks have ended, laying out the virtues of a merger that he said could have strengthened corporate America and won approval from regulators.
US stock futures were little changed on Monday after a four-week rally, starting a busy week of corporate earnings and the US central bank’s policy meeting with a relative calm while investors monitor the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz amid stalled Iran peace talks.
A data center developer is seeking $4.54 billion in junk-debt financing for an artificial intelligence project tied to Nvidia Corp., testing investor appetite after a recent surge in offerings.
As of this writing, the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed since February 28. Roughly 20% of the world’s seaborne oil stopped moving through the chokepoint. T
As the Q1 2026 earnings season enters its most frantic stretch, the market stands at a critical crossroads between resilient corporate fundamentals and macro-driven anxiety. While the high percentage of early beats suggests that American business remains surprisingly nimble, the coming days will determine if that momentum can withstand the Mag 7’s massive spending requirements.
Like many of you, I am inundated with information. Most of it is not useful or repetitive. Today, were going to do something different. Rather than one theme, let’s look at various bits of data that I found interesting this week.
Leaders often have trouble focusing on the longer-term. In the corporate arena, pressure to produce quarterly earnings can truncate planning horizons. In public life, popular opinion and election cycles can impose myopia. It takes a unique set of ingredients to set, and stick to, a lasting vision.
Congressional confirmation hearings tend to generate far more noise than signal, and this one was no exception. Between politicians posturing for the cameras in hopes of becoming their party’s next rising star, and nominees exercising extreme caution to avoid missteps under oath, these hearings rarely produce actionable insights.
Back-and-forth developments over the weekend around the Strait of Hormuz have added near-term volatility to energy markets. That uncertainty is feeding into oil prices and reinforcing questions about how persistent energy-driven inflation pressures could become, particularly if disruption risks continue to ebb and flow.
